doubts, then and now
by thir13enth
Summary: with her, he doesn't doubt again. — shallura


a **shallurafanfiction** request for **jazzzasaruss** , who asked for a buddy cop au, which i turned into a **_space cops_** au. (sorry not sorry)  
 _if you'd like to request a fic, please go to the **shallurafanfiction tumblr** and ask there! there are plenty of authors in this network that would be willing to write for you, and i assure you that they are all very awesome writers and very cool people!_

 **notes:** yes. i am very guilty for making this about five times longer than it should be

* * *

There was only one time in his life that Takashi Shirogane ever doubted a woman's strength, and good god was he wrong to even think he could.

Shiro was raised under a humble roof on Earth with a single mother (who often said no to all the candies he ever asked for at in the Asian supermarket), a rebellious grandmother (who often snuck him all those very candies he was denied), and a doting aunt (who treated him like her flesh-and-blood son, showering random un-birthday-timed gifts on him, especially after her daughter moved to college on Mars), so he fully understood the power and the force of female determination and will—as well as the occasional ruler slap to his wrist when he was caught staying up too late playing video games in his youth.

But when his chief commanding officer surveys the room, looking for any partner-less cops to couple the newly arriving agent with, he tries not to make eye contact—but damn it, he does, and his boss points over in his direction with one of his purple digits.

"You! Earthling!"

Upon being caught, Shiro sighs. Shiro doesn't usually let anyone refer to him by his home planet—that's just species-ist—but his supervisor is from planet Walhalla and lacks the front teeth to properly pronounce the 'sh' in either Takashi or Shirogane, so the human accepts the slang, for lack of a better term.

"Yes, sir!" he replies, nevertheless, standing to his feet.

"You're the one without a partner, right?"

"Yes, sir," he affirms.

He unconsciously supports his right arm with his left hand—as if it isn't strong enough to hold itself up.

The chief briefly glances at his metal prosthetic. "And this is your first Galra investigative case in a while, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir."

The Walhallan ponders for a moment.

"Alright," he finally decides. "I'll pair the incoming officer with you. I'm sure you'll be able to work out your new case with her."

Shiro blinks. "Her?"

"Allura's a transfer—so this one isn't coming in as a rookie."

Shiro doesn't add comment.

"What? You got some doubts about working with a woman?"

"What? Oh, no," Shiro says, shaking his head vigorously. "It's just…it's just that it's been a while since there's been a woman on this force."

His chief eyes him strangely. "Well don't be thinking weird things and make me need to report you."

"Absolutely not, sir. I wouldn't tolerate it myself."

.

.

It's not that he doubts her strength—it's more that he doubts _his_.

As things would have it, he doesn't met his new female partner until the first official day that the investigation is open. He doesn't even meet her during the debriefing of his mission, and he's just told the barebones details: apparently, the planet Harrap survived a few meteor showers a week back, but new evidence from the local police force in that galaxy supported the suspicion that the natural disasters might not have been so natural after all and that there's plenty of reasons to believe that the Galrans caused these meteors to come crashing down on Harrap's surface.

And as part of the special Galran task force, Allura and him were to go check out the scene—and start the case from scratch.

They're about to head out into the stars to check out the scene—but first, they're conditioning for light-speed travel. Light-speed travel is the only way to get to Harrap, and while traveling at the junction between waves and particles, no one risks being weak against the very physical forces that keep the universe stitched together.

And so they meet first at the gym.

"Spot me?" she asks him right away.

She hasn't even introduced herself to him, he hasn't said a single word to her ever, and they barely know each other's face, yet she cuts right to the business. Maybe it's rude, he thinks, but maybe it's redundant to perform the formalities anyway—it's no secret that both of them have been researching the other's profile, and their names are very clearly printed over the right side of their shirts.

He raises an eyebrow, but immediately deflates it back to a neutral expression before she completely turns her head back to him to wait for his answer.

"Yeah. Sure," he replies, awkwardly.

She walks over to the bench press without another word. She's so swift that he doesn't get a chance to properly see what she looks like—aside from her thick silver hair—but he so far can tell that she looks a lot more humanoid than the last few aliens that walked into the new force.

In fact, he presumes she's from Earth before she turns to add some weights to the bar, and he notices her pointed ears and fluorescent marks under her eyes. And unless that's the most recent trend in fashion back home, he doesn't suppose that's human at all.

She lies back and then starts her set, without much warning. It's barely a minute and she's ten reps in.

He notices that she's barely breaking a sweat. Her eyebrows aren't furrowed at all, and her breathing hasn't changed one bit since she's started lifting.

He thinks the silence is a little odd, and he thinks that it might be a good idea to start the getting-to-know-each-other conversation sooner than later.

"So, Allura…" he starts, his eyes following the up and down of the weights. "What sector you coming transferring in from?"

She doesn't interrupt her momentum, continuing to lift while answering.

"I once worked at the Arusian sector. But I'm originally from Altea," she reports—and he can hear it in her thick accent. There isn't anywhere else in the universe where people communicate that melodically.

His eyebrows raise. "That's _eons_ away," he blurts.

She smiles politely, before gently dropping the bench press bar back up its rack and sitting up to face him. "I know you're probably wondering how I came to be here in the Milky Way Sector, but I assure you that I'm here to do some real detective work—the Arus Sector doesn't handle very much beyond accidental cooking fires and the occasional theft."

One corner of his lip hitches up in amusement, and he crosses his arms. "You don't think that finding out exactly who set the oven temperature too high on the Thanksgiving casserole is intriguing enough?"

She wrinkles her nose. "I don't know what this Thanksgiving or this casserole is, but I know that pace of police work isn't for me," she explains quickly.

Shiro doesn't think she's telling him the full story, but he figures that he has plenty of time to get to know his new Altean partner, so he lets any further questions go.

She stands up from the bench, stretching out her arms while doing so. She nods her head over to the unoccupied weights. "Your turn," she says, and then briefly pauses. "It's Takashi, right?"

"Shiro," he replies. "Just Shiro is fine."

"I see."

They sidestep each other to switch places, so that he's standing before the bench press and she's spotting him. He runs his hand through his hair—counting the disks on the bar—and realizes that she's left the weights set at 20 more pounds (or whatever measure of unit for mass they used at this garrison) than he usually presses.

He lies his back onto the bench and attempts to bench press the additional 20 pounds anyway, but even before he tries, he finds that he can barely get the bar off the rack.

"Ha," he laughs, dropping his hands to his sides. "I think I'll have to take this down a few notches."

"Hm," she simply remarks, immediately getting up to pull off some weights from the bar, but she doesn't tease him about it for the rest of their time conditioning that day.

.

.

Even though he travels for quite some distance with Allura, he doesn't get to know her much more.

There isn't much time for conversation outside of business—but he at least knows that he likes working with her already. She has a sharp wit and an action-oriented mindset, and delegating tasks between the two of them is easier than he's experienced for a while.

When they finally land on planet Harrap and then head out to survey the scene, he doesn't have to exchange a single word with her to know she's collecting samples at the meteor shower crash sites and that he's interviewing with the present local police officials in the area to get their recollection of what happened. When she's through with her task, she just gives him a nod before she heads away—but he knows that she's going into town to see the aftermath of the disaster—and they both know that they'll reconvene at their meeting point later that day.

It goes like this for the next few days while they're on planet Harrap: At the crack of first dawn (the planet has three half-suns, and dawn is when the first half-sun—a star so far away it only really provides yellow and red light—rises over the horizon), they set out to collect whatever information they came for. When evening arrives, they meet back at their temporary station, discuss their findings briefly, have a quick phone conference call with their supervisor, and subsequently write up short reports on the goings of the day before heading to bed.

Sometimes when they have the chance, they'll chat about what topics come to mind—what foods they like the most, what interesting past cases they solved, what galaxy they want to travel to the most—and Shiro finds it's easy to share his thoughts with her.

She listens intently, and she has a good sense of humor—laughing even though Shiro knows he doesn't deliver the punch line well. She makes him feel good about himself, and he finds himself opening up to her a lot quicker than he expects. She has plenty of her own stories to tell too, and the nights pass easier than he's ever remembered them to pass.

But work is work, and after three straight days of working on Harrap, they're more than ready to head back to headquarters. They say their goodbyes to the local police force there, ensure that they have everything that they need before going, and then de-anchor the space ship from the ground so that they can take-off.

Once their course back to the space station is set on automatic, they bid each other good night and retreat to their own quarters to sleep off the rest of their travel.

It's nice to be back working on the Galran investigative force, he thinks to himself, as he tucks himself into bed.

It's nice to be working with someone again, too.

.

.

They present the findings from their three-day investigation at Harrap to the rest of the Galran task force members—

"Fortunately for the Harrap citizens, the meteors had landed in a less populated area of the planet," Allura starts. "So in cost, the planet had not suffered very much, but the aftershocks from the meteor shower are still affecting many of the normal functions of government and business. However, rebuilding seems to be going at a happy pace."

"These meteor samples contained plenty of quintessence and Balmeran energy residues, in proportions consistent with those from past meteor showers that were facilitated by the Galrans," Shiro explains.

They've done their research while at Harrap—

"The government denies any previous contact with Galrans and cannot report any particular reasons for being targets to Galran offense," she adds. "Additionally, during short undercover trips, we ensured that the population of Galran expatriates, although concerning in number, were not in contact with the current Galran nations."

Plenty of it—

"Upon further evaluation of the predicted original trajectories of the meteors compared with their final resting place on the surface of Harrap, we determined that the Galran influence on the meteors occurred at a point around fourteen light-minutes away from the planet," he details. "After triangulation, we concluded that the energy wave that redirected the meteor course came from planet Xerlop—where we previously had suspected Galran influence."

"That being said," she says. "Xerlop would indeed be a good place to continue our investigations. Going to Xerlop would help confirm whether or not the Galrans have somehow infiltrated the planet."

"Sounds like a plan," their boss affirms. "We shall send the next team to Xerlop."

Allura nods in agreement. "The one thing that was interesting though," she continues, flipping a document page, "is that fortunately there happened to be a Harrapian space ship out near the pathway of the meteor shower—and when upon realizing the meteors would eventually hit Harrap, the crew on that ship had directed high-energy waves to try to offset the path of the meteors. Given that little shove, Harrap was definitely saved from being hit high impact from the Galran meteor attack."

"Yeah, they were very lucky," Shiro repeats. "It's not often that space ships are equipped with high-energy wave conductors—the fact that there happened to be one deployed near the path of the meteors is so timely and opportune."

"Why that Harrapian ship was there with that high-grade equipment in and of itself is curious…" she muses. "But I think that as we find out more, the pieces will start to come together."

"Great—thank you so much, Allura," their supervisor says, before dismissing the rest of the task force members. As the rest of the team leaves, the chief turns back to Allura.

"Good work, Allura," he tells her. "Good work, Shiro," he adds when he turns to face Shiro. "Very good for your first case. We made plenty of headway in the last few days."

But Allura doesn't take the compliment. She's still staring down at the case documents on the desk before her, her eyes focused and her lips in a tight frown.

"Wait a tick," she says, holding down the file papers under her fingertips.

She peruses the documents for another moment.

"It seems all too coincidental," she murmurs, almost under her breath.

Their supervisor cocks his eyebrow at her. "What do you mean?" he asks, and the other Galran task force members—already halfway out of the room—seem to begrudgingly turn around to hear her last few comments.

"The planet was barely affected by the meteor shower—and it's not to say that that's a bad thing, but the week before that the government had issued precautionary evacuation of the meteor-affected area, reporting that there was a leak of carbon monoxide from one of the land formations," Allura says, slowly. "Not only that, but commerce that day had been paused and all air travel had been cancelled because of energy grid shutdowns."

"Your point being?"

"Well," she continues. "It's just that the Harrapians haven't experienced a power outage since they transferred their primary energy source from burning arsenic-containing compounds to collecting geothermal potential—over centuries ago."

She looks up to search everyone's eyes for some kind of understanding. When she looks over at Shiro, he finds that even he can't offer her this. He doesn't know where she's going with this—even if she's been discussing this case with him for the last five days.

"What I'm trying to say," she rewords, "is that the meteor shower hit Harrap at the theoretically least-affected area, at the most opportune time, with a chance preventative measure with the space ship." Her voice raises. "And I think…I think that maybe Harrap had expected such an attack." She pauses for a moment. "And maybe…maybe whoever is in that Harrapian space ship and wherever it is going might give us some answers."

Allura lets her words sink in—before suddenly everyone's eyes turn wide.

"By the seven sisters of Pleiades, you're _right_ ," their supervisor agrees, his voice turning upwards. He takes the rest of the documents on the table and flips through them with his purple limbs furiously, discovering even more and more reason to believe in Allura's recently proposed theory. The other task force members start to get on the same boat, and they murmur excitedly among themselves as well.

"You're _absolutely_ right," the chief repeats, before looking back at her. "We'll have to quickly change the route of the next mission—instead of going to Xerlop, we need to head to whatever location that Harrapian space ship is going! Or at least we need to intercept them!"

"I think that would definitely be our next best move," she agrees.

The commanding officer is visibly flustered. He places down all the documents in his hands and immediately swivels around to head out the door—seemingly to start getting the paperwork done for changing the course of the next expedition.

"Good work!" he tells the two of them before he's completely out the door. "Good work!" Then he looks around the room at the other officers. "Well?" he asks, demanding of the other task force members. "Get back to work! Meeting is over! Are you going to impress me with more leads?"

Immediately tensing, the others head back to their stations—but not before telling Allura and Shiro what an awesome job they did.

"That was really all Allura," Shiro corrects them. "I was just helping out."

But even as Shiro says this, he can't stop the smile that is spreading over his lips at the sound of a job well done, and he makes sure to pay forward the compliments to Allura—who he is ever even more proud to be partners with.

He follows her into the break room and starts making tea (it's the only beverage left in the drawers). While the water is boiling, he watches her pull out a small package of crackers of some sort before she starts nibbling on them—her first food intake since the morning, as she'd been working tirelessly since she woke up.

There's silence at first, but then she suddenly breaks into a small laugh. "That was pretty cool, huh?" she asks him, turning toward him, leaning her hip against the refrigerator. There's a big smile on her face. "I made a valuable finding. My first case on the job."

He doesn't think his grin could get any wider, but it does.

"That was an amazing deduction," he compliments her.

"Thank you," she says.

Another moment of silence.

The tea boils over, and he quickly pours some into a mug and offers it to her. "I would have never even thought to think any of what you just proposed," he continues.

She seems to freeze for a brief pause before she reanimates, reaching forward for the mug.

"No," she says. She takes a slow sip of tea before continuing. "I wasn't being clever. It was all just a hunch. This just all kind of looks like what happened before."

She's hanging questions in front of his mind, and he can't resist following her lead. "What happened before?"

Allura takes a sip of tea and sighs before answering.

"Same thing," she starts. "A disaster happened. It could have been worse, but it created just enough chaos to undermine the order of Altea. Two days after that, the military spotted an entire army of Galran ships coming in our direction—guns cocked and ready to conquer. All hell broke loose. People started leaving the planet however they could."

She breathes in and out, slowly, before continuing. "We stood our ground. We were the royal and ruling family. If Altea was going done, we were going to go down with it."

Allura quiets, and Shiro lets the silence linger for another moment.

"Then what?"

"My father went missing."

Her answer comes harsher than he expects.

He hesitates, but he asks further anyway. "Can I ask what happened to him?"

At first, her silence makes him think that he maybe asked the wrong question at the very wrong time, but she suddenly takes a quick breath.

"I don't know," she then admits. "But one day the Galrans were invading my home planet and then the next day, he was gone."

Everything suddenly clicks.

"So that's why you decided to transfer to this sector," he says, realizing and thinking out loud. "You wanted to find out more about the Galra…" He holds his breath for a second. "…maybe even…find out what happened to your dad."

She smiles stiffly.

It's all he needs to know that he hit the nail on the head.

"That's not healthy, you know," he remarks, jokingly—

but not really, because he still remembers a few years back when he was making side trips beyond duty, preoccupied with finding to answers to impossible questions—even after he was decommissioned doing as many cases for the force.

And especially from doing anything Galran related.

.

.

He learns that she has a strong will the hard way.

"Kerberos!" one of their team members yells, rushing into the space station. "That Harrapian space ship! It's going to _Kerberos_!"

Shiro's eyes widen.

He hasn't heard of that planet since—

"Kerberos?!" come bewildered whispers and shouts from around the room.

"Kerberos?" Allura turns toward Shiro, asking him.

He takes a deep breath. "Kerberos is the planet where we last ran into the Galrans," he tells her.

And then more softly:

"Kerberos is where we last picked up signals of Voltron."

"Voltron…" she repeats.

"Do you know it?"

"Yes," she replies, looking down and closing her eyes. She cradles her forehead between her fingers. "The strongest weapon in all the universe…" she continues. "I remember…I remember my father mentioning it to me before." She suddenly looks up. "The Galrans are after Voltron?!"

"Most likely," Shiro affirms. "At least…that's what we discovered in Kerberos."

"And Kerberos is where the Harrapian ship is going," Allura mutters, clearly in deep thought. "And after all that funny business that we uncovered the other day, it's very possible that the Harrapians are working with the Galra—and purposely took a hit from the supposedly unexpected meteor shower to pretend to be victimized in order to keep the attention away from Kerberos while we heed to their request to protect them!"

She stands up immediately, gathering her things. "Then we have to go!" she says. "We have to go _now_. We just _can't_ lose this opportunity to figure out what's happening."

And then she's walking out of the office, storming off.

Eyes wide, he watches her leave. Just before she disappears, his legs suddenly stand him up.

He gets up—because he can't just _watch her go_ like the last time he watched—

"Wait," he shouts behind her, quickly catching up. "We have to at least inform the chief that we're going, right?" he reasons with her. "We can't just walk out the door like this."

Allura looks back at him briefly, not stopping her stride down the hallway.

"You're right," she agrees, and then instead of turning right to the space ship hub, she makes a sharp left to their supervisor's office. "I'm sure that he'll let us go right away once he hears about Voltron."

"Hold on," he says. "We need to think about this—"

"I don't think we have a choice to delay this expedition," she interrupts. "We simply don't have time. What if the Galrans are behind this? We can't just let them acquire Voltron without a fight!"

"Wait," he tries again. "We're not even ready for this. We can't win—not just the two of us."

She shakes her head. "Then we'll make the first shot," she says, resolved.

"Wait, Allura," He reaches forward to catch her hand.

"No!" she snaps at him, taking her wrist back from his. "There isn't any question about whether or not we're going—and if you're not coming with me, then I'll go myself!"

"No, don't—this isn't a good idea," he tries to convince her. He tries to catch one of her arms, walk quickly behind her to try to keep up with her. "We should think about this a little more."

But his words don't affect her resolution and she slips past every single time he tries to get a hold of her.

"Allura!" he calls again. He's begging. He's practically down on both knees, pleading.

"What?!" she scowls, whirling around. " _What_ do you possibly think we can do here just sitting on our asses just twiddling our thumbs when _all the evidence_ points to Kerberos? We _have_ to go there and investigate—we _can't_ just let this go when the answer is _right under our nose_!"

"I just," he starts, but he trips on his tongue, so he begins again. "I know this means a lot to you…and I know the Galrans affected you personally." Her fierce expression doesn't yield. Her eyes are still intense, and the frown over her lips doesn't relax. He treads carefully. "I just want to make sure that we're not jumping in too quickly because—"

"Because what?" she hisses. "Because I'm _emotional_? Because I lost _my father_? Because I lost _my home_? Because I lost _everything I loved and knew_?"

"No, it's not that. I—"

"This isn't just about _my father_ ," she tells him, stepping forward. Her eyes are angry. Her lips are sneered. "This isn't _just_ about _my home planet_. This is about _justice_ for the entire universe from those wretched Galrans. This is about putting them back into place so that they don't dare conquer another innocent planet without fear of being _decimated_."

Her words are powerful. He's frozen still by them—not because he's never heard such passion before, but because he _has heard_ these words before.

Because the last time he heard them, they were coming from his _own_ mouth.

"It was in Kerberos," he suddenly slips.

She turns back around immediately. He can see on her face that she suspects something, that she suspects that he's not telling her the entire story, that she suspects that he's keeping something terrible deep inside of him—

Defeated, he looks up to face her, eye to eye.

"I lost him," he finally admits.

Her expression doesn't change, but the hard flint in her gaze shatters when she hears that he's lost someone special—because his eyes match hers in sorrow.

"In Kerberos?" she asks—softly.

"Yes."

"Who?"

His voice shakes.

"Matt," he says.

He hasn't said that name out loud in a while. He's forgotten how hard it is for him to say the name—it grips his throat tight and squeezes his voice dry.

"To them," he continues. "I lost him to _them_."

She swallows slowly. "…to the…Galra—"

"I lost Matt in a raid against the Galra in Kerberos," he finally says, in a complete sentence, in a complete thought, with complete disclosure.

He's holding his right arm in his left hand again—as if the metal prosthetic is too heavy to handle, too heavy to drag around in the same way he thinks about his past over and over again…

She doesn't break eye contact with him, and he doesn't break eye contact with her—even if he feels tears welling at the bottom of his eyes and even if he doesn't want to cry in front of her, who he's only known for the past five days.

But there's something that makes him want to trust her with all the burdens, insecurities, and histories he has—something that makes him think that she's strong enough to shoulder some of his secrets, even atop of her own.

There was only one weight that he doubted anyone would be able to carry alongside him—and he was wrong to ever think that she wouldn't be able to do that for him.

.

.

Allura was right all along—not completely, but her suspicions were on point.

After attempting stealth intermissions to communicate with the Harrapian space ship, they find out that the space ship doesn't contain space crew members—but those of the Harrapian ruling class.

They find out that the Harrapians aren't quite working with the Galrans, but that they had most certainly been blackmailed by the Galrans.

They find out that the Harrapian ruling class decided that in order to save the most Harrapians, they would work with the wretched Galrans, who threatened to direct three more rounds of meteors toward their planet if they did not heed to Galran instruction to help them acquire Voltron.

They devise a plan with the Harrapians.

They think it might work. They _hope_ it might work.

Now, Allura and Shiro head out to their space ships again—as partners that share a bond. A bond—broken and scarred over by the ones they loved and lost—but strong nevertheless.

Now, they put on their helmets and buckle in for landing, about to go all in.

Now, he sees Kerberos before him, in all of its gray, white, and green glory.

He's almost forgotten how beautiful the planet is, tucked behind all the memories of his failures.

There's a bittersweet smile on his lips.

"Ready?" she asks him.

"Absolutely," he agrees.

Then just before they tip the nose of their space ship down to Kerberos, he turns to her—

"Thank you," he tells her.

He can't really voice what he's thanking her for—but somewhere between accepting his weaknesses and understanding him without a spoken word, he knows that she knows exactly what she's done for him.

"You too," she simply replies, looking back at him, a small smile gracing her lips. "You remind me that I can still carry on, and that I can still do something about this universe."

He returns a smile.

"Yes," he says. "We can."

With her, he doesn't doubt again.

* * *

 **notes:** *groan* ughhhhh this turned soooo much longer than i expected this too! this is the longest fic i've written in a very _very_ long time. so sorry if this read weird at any point!

as always, looking forward to your thoughts,  
 **thir13enth**


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